Children hardest hit by drought, says UNICEF

The severe drought affecting the Horn of Africa has taken a heavy toll on an estimated 1.2 million children under the age of five, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Wednesday. The children were especially vulnerable to threats posed by malnutrition and disease. "This drought ominously compounds an already dismal humanitarian situation," said Per Engebak, UNICEF regional director for eastern and southern Africa. "Many factors have chipped away at the people's survival capacities, and this drought is further contributing to the erosion of those capacities as a growing number of people are becoming destitute," he added. More than 56,000 children under the age of five were facing malnutrition in the Somali and Oromiya regions of southern Ethiopia, and the number was expected to rise sharply as the drought worsens. In Kenya, between 40,000 and 60,000 children and women in the 27 affected districts are malnourished. According to UNICEF, as many as three out of 10 children in the drought-affected areas of Somalia will be malnourished. Children weakened by malnutrition are at gravely higher risk of any infection, and measles is one of the most virulent illnesses, spreading quickly among those who are not immunised, UNICEF said. In southern Somalia, years of inter-clan fighting and lack of basic social amenities meant that about 90 percent of children under the age of five were not immunised against measles. The scenario was similar in the affected regions in Ethiopia. Schools in parts of northern Kenya were reporting increased absenteeism and drop-out rates, as children joined in the search and struggle for pasture for weakened livestock and food and water for themselves and their families, UNICEF said. The agency, which launched an urgent appeal for US $14.7 million to help an estimated six million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, said the current drought was the worst to hit the region in a decade. Working with the three governments, UNICEF said it planned to expand therapeutic and supplementary feeding programmes, step up vaccination and vitamin A campaigns and provide water and sanitation services. Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned of a possible humanitarian disaster in Kenya's drought-stricken northern and eastern areas unless donations for emergency food aid are received immediately. It said food stocks for its Kenyan operation would run out in weeks. "Since our last appeal in December, we have received very little against the growing needs," said James Morris, WFP executive director. "We don't have enough for the 1.2 million people we are currently feeding, let alone the expected increase to 2.5 million or more in February." Two successive years of failed rains have precipitated the crisis in the ecologically fragile area that converges in northern Kenya, southern Ethiopia and central and southern Somalia. Agricultural productivity in the region was already in decline due to local insecurity and conflicts. Pastoral communities have been hit particularly hard by the drought, which has led to the death of large numbers of livestock and left herders with nothing to exchange for survival. "We have warned and appealed for months for contributions to save lives in drought-hit Kenya," said Tesema Negash, WFP Kenya country director. "We are in the midst of an emergency. If we receive no new donations now, it is extremely likely that Kenya will be hit by a humanitarian disaster in the months to come," he added. WFP requires some 350,000 tonnes of food valued at $238 million to feed the anticipated 2.5 million people in Kenya this year, but the agency is already short of $43 million to feed 1.2 million.